Lifetime of a Grain of Gunpowder
by hearmelaugh
Summary: In which Lavi's a speck of powder in a fireworks tube, Kanda's mortally ill, and everything ends in a manner that's fair. Death, AU, a little strange.


Do you know what it's like? To be imbued with precious rare metals, designed to make you burst into colour? Like the iron that makes blood red, only neither iron nor blood is precious. Lavi's a grain of gunpowder pressed up intimately close with Barium (Barry? Umm…) that's supposed to make him flare green. Such is the life of a grain of gunpowder. One amongst thousands (hundreds of thousands, millions), but all of God's creations are allowed to love. And if there's just one, just _one_ thing Lavi occupies his thoughts with above all others, it would be the man who has stroked and stoked him for months upon months now.

It's not often that so much care would be given to a fireworks display; China, that glorious beast, has factories eternally prepared to throw up bunches of sparklers. Kanda? Kanda only has one dream. To make the best god fucking damned fireworks display the world has ever seen.

You occupy yourself when you only have half a year to live (one and a quarter months now, really). Kanda doesn't need fanfare or guns shooting the air. He _needs_, to stay in this one small room of his illogically large house, surrounded by the sharp, biting smell of chemicals that would bring him his death that much sooner.

He knows it probably won't be the best, most spectacular thing anyone has ever seen. He knows there'll be less than ten people saying goodbye to him at his grave. But a man can dream, even if he never tells anyone about it.

People do always, always underestimate non-sentient creatures (could they be called creatures if they had no life? What is the definition of life when you can't breathe but a heart beats in a strictly non-organic sense?), not expecting how so much information could be gleaned just by touch. Kanda works tirelessly in his little garage to make his flowers of fire. Lavi can think of nothing else but the quiet, calm depression of the man he would give his (non-) life to.

Must be nice to be human, thinks Lavi. Must be nice to have hands, 'nd bits, 'nd things like that. Conversation gets mighty boring mighty quickly if you're the only one who's ever bothered to pay attention outside of your ring of electrons. He wonders how ionic attachments would work for humans. The half that makes you stable.

If that was all Kanda needed...

Lavi still wouldn't be able to give it to him. And it's definite fact, now, an inescapable fact. Kanda's body? Cold and dead, in an open casket suspended over his grave. So the closed eyes could see the sky. Lavi can hear soft whimpers and tired tears, as he and his brethren are put into position.

It's a night burial. Strange, thoroughly unorthodox, but it was Kanda's one and only request. He's worked the rest of his life to make those fireworks bloom, and he had refused to let his death stop the colours from shining as brightly as they deserve.

Everything's put into position, Lavi is pointed at the sky.

On the priest's call, their fuse is lit. If Lavi had breath, he would hold it (that's similar to Kanda, isn't it?). In three, in two, in one, and he's airborne.

The feeling of his existence catching fire is a strange one, but not painful (he's already equated pain to that still body in that casket). He can't really see, but he's probably a rather long way up. There's a muted roar, as if flowers of fire are breaking their way through cracks in the dark, dark sky. Explosions. Screams? Possibly.

Fireworks are like the very best sort of people. They don't last long, but for the entire duration of their existence there could be nothing better.

Lavi's soon burnt out, gently being cast away by the wind in his broken powdery form. The last thing he thinks about before he's blown out of sight of the dark coffin on the ground below was that, the priest had said it, hadn't he?

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Hello again, Kanda.

...

A/N: Old strange thing I wrote for Dem c: Inspired by primary school memories of always having to write essays from the point of view of inanimate objects! More stuff coming along soon, happy birthday Kanda!


End file.
